A different view...

Actually I am VERY concerned about our defense.....

After this preseason and last night's game, I got to thinking of how many teams where Saunders has been the OC actually have had a good defense (say top 10).

The reason I bring this up, is that our defense must go against our offense during practice.
Under Gibbs' offense, where we were a power running team, our defense saw alot of that during the week, and were very well prepared for it on weekends. With Saunder's offense, I have seen very little POWER running, and accordingly I would assume it is practiced very little. Hence our D is suffering from it.

By the way, I think it would be good info if someone could check to see what the defenses ranked on teams where Saunders was the OC.

--Just a thought

Well, I think we have to expect our offense will definitely go down ranking wise if Saunders offense starts to take hold. Saunders scores and normally scores pretty quick. Defense will be tired at the end of a game.

I'm not sure why there is so much emphasis being put on the run defense. The analysts were making comments about Washington being run on last night, also. Yet, Chester Taylor only had 88 yards on 31 carries, or 2.83 yards per carry. The Vikings only had 86 yards as a team, so I don't think the run defense looked that bad at all.

The run D did it's job.

It was the lack of pressure on 3rd downs that killed us.

We just couldn't buy a stop.

The run D did it's job.

It was the lack of pressure on 3rd downs that killed us.

We just couldn't buy a stop.

Yeah...that was my take on the D too. The stats support this.

Minnesota had 34 rushes for 86 yards, a 2.5 ypc average. That's quite good. True, their were a couple of missed tackles in there but remember that the Minnesota O-line is very good.

To me, it was Minnesota's 3rd down conversion ratio of 9 of 17 that was most concerning to me. It's true that our pass D has been hurt by the loss of Springs and then Prioleau on the opening kickoff, but I believe it was mostly the lack of consistent pressure on the QB that allowed the completions and consequently, the first downs. If you can presure the QB consistently, then you can get by with average talent in the backfield.

As for next week against the Cowboys, I'm somewhat optimistic. The Boys O-line isn't as good as Minnesota's and I think our offense will get better each week, especially as Portis becomes healthy. But we shall see. Win or lose, good or bad, I remain a die-hard Redskin fan.

The Mayor

I think Springs' return will shore up our pass D (our area of weakness) and we'll be fine.

I think our inability to score in the redzone to put this game out of reach prior to 1/2 time was the key after thinking about this a little bit. If we score a TD before the 1/2 we are up 10 and can pin the ears back on defense in the second 1/2. I don't know if I am correct in my assumption but if we get the ball in the endzone only 1 more time in lieu of a field goal we win that game.

I think our inability to score in the redzone to put this game out of reach prior to 1/2 time was the key after thinking about this a little bit. If we score a TD before the 1/2 we are up 10 and can pin the ears back on defense in the second 1/2. I don't know if I am correct in my assumption but if we get the ball in the endzone only 1 more time in lieu of a field goal we win that game.

I agree. If we could have come away with just one TD instead of a FG it would have been a totally different ballgame.

We were so good in the redzone last year especially in the 2nd half of the season. I believe you can gauge the comfort level of an offense by how they execute in the redzone. We looked lost and out of sync inside the 20 last night. That will change once everyone gets on the same page offensively.

our red-zone offense lost us the game, not the defense, not John Hall

The biggest issue w/ the team was 3rd down

- D was the 9/17 3rd down converson- that of course was aided by giving away 4 on penalties.

- O was 4/13 with 2 of those being by penalty.

We couldn't sustain a drive and we couldn't stop a drive.

If you watched the locker room interviews from redskins.com there was something very interesting in Marcus Washington's interview- he said (and I am paraphrasing) "we knew this officiating crew and we knew how they were going to call the hitting close" If they practiced for it there should have been no excuse for 2 facemasks at the end of the game.

That being said; penalties shouldn't have mattered if we could score TDs instead of Feild goals. We had more than enough opportunities to win ((even after the bull**** call on ST and the double bull**** no call when Lloyd (I think it was him) got clobbered on an uncatchable ball.))

I think these are the type of problems that get better game by game. It is much better than trying to figure out how to stop the run and stop cronic false starts- those issues mean we are in for a long season; as I am sure many of us remember from the not so distant past.

Bottom line is not a great game ...by not horrid either.